With my host Trebor Scholz from the Institute for Distributed Creativity I'm now confirming the various talks and presentations I'm giving in Buffalo and New York City as part of my research residency at the iDC - my thanks for them for having me and organising these events. For any readers based over there, here's what we have planned so far:

Buffalo

• 28 Sep., 1-3 p.m. - Workshop at SUNY Buffalo
  Produsers and Produsage 
   
• 28 Sep., 6 p.m. - guest lecture at SUNY Buffalo (room 235):
  'Anyone Can Edit': Understanding the Produser
  The Mojtaba Saminejad Lecture (see announcement)

New York City

• 11 Oct., 10 a.m. - guest lecture at the New School:
  'Anyone Can Edit': Understanding the Produser
   
• 11 Oct., 6 p.m. - guest talk at The Thing:
  Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production

  Recent years have seen the emergence of collaborative publishing models in key news Websites ranging from the worldwide Indymedia network to the massively successful technology news site Slashdot and further to the multitude of Weblogs. Such sites have been instrumental in debunking political misinformation and providing first-hand coverage of unfolding events from 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina, but also provide an important corrective to the mainstream news media in their everyday coverage of current events.

My host at the Institute for Distributed Creativity in New York, Trebor Scholz, prompted me again for someone to dedicate my public lectures in September and October to. Perhaps happily, my search for bloggers or other citizen journalists who were killed in action (see I Seek Dead People) came up empty, so I've now looked for bloggers who were gaoled for their investigative work and open reporting. As I found out, there are whole Websites dedicated to this issue, including the Committee to Protect Bloggers who highlight the persecution of blogger-journalists around the world. Very interesting reading, especially also on the emerging networks of bloggers under threat in very different areas of the world.

Later this year I'll head over to the U.S. for a couple of conferences and a brief research residency with the Institute for Distributed Creativity - I'll be in Buffalo on 26-29 September and New York City on 10-15 October. My host Trebor Scholz has now posted some information about the residency on the iDC site.

This residency marks the first steps in the next stage of my current research agenda, which started with the work on Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production and currently continues with the Uses of Blogs book and other research on blogs and wikis (also in a teaching environment). As part of this work I've introduced the concept of the produser - marking the move from a production/consumption dichotomy to user-led (or at least user-involved) production. This also goes well beyond the 'prosumer' idea - which (seeing as it retains the '(con)sumer' bit) doesn't transcend that dichotomy.